


Mrs Crocker

by CookieDoughMe



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, I'm really annoyed we don't even know Duke's mother's name, Now with surprise bonus added chapter!!, Pre-Series, Rated T for the mentions of violence (against unnamed extras - not any of the named characters), deviates from canon in terms of timelines, this is way more angsty than the intro might suggest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-07 04:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15210968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CookieDoughMe/pseuds/CookieDoughMe
Summary: He wouldn’t remember most of it, but for the first few years of his life, Duke Crocker was loved.





	1. Chapter 1

He wouldn’t remember most of it, but for the first few years of his life, Duke Crocker was loved.

Faced with a smiling, helpless baby, his parents were able (for a while) to put their disagreements aside, and pull their chaotic lives together enough to give their son what he needed, and to enjoy playing with him whenever they could.

They took him to the beach in the summer, building sand castles and running through the waves. As he got a little older, Simon would take him to one of the quieter beaches and play at baseball with him once the tourists had left. They read him stories at bedtime, and presented him with candle-topped cakes on his birthdays, and took every opportunity they could to make him laugh. They were happy, the three of them.

Until the Troubles came.

His father knew what was going on as soon as the rumours started but, like most of the people who really understand the town’s history, he didn’t talk about it. His mother had no idea of the things the people in this town could do, and so no way to understand what she was seeing when she turned a corner one day and ran into one of the Clarke family and their recently triggered Trouble.

One moment, she was walking down a sunny, empty street in a quiet little fishing town, the next, out of nowhere, she was face to face with her worst nightmares. Eventually, Lucy Ripley found her there, shaking in a corner, and helped her back to the house. Between what Lucy implied, and what Simon reluctantly added later, she came to understand that the quiet little fishing village was not always so safe as she had thought.

She avoided that part of town for a while, reluctant to step around that corner and find something awful again. But eventually she needed to take that route, and she told herself it was just a place where one road met another; what she saw last time could have happened anywhere and in any case the person behind it had apparently died in a bar fight in Bangor.

So she walked along the quiet sunny streets again, and she turned the same corner again, and there this time was her husband, bent over a body lying on the cold hard concrete. The body was that of nice Mr Jones from the chemist, who’d always had a smile for them and a friendly word for Duke since she’d started going in there when he was tiny.

It took her surprised brain a moment to take in the scene. Mr Jones lay on his back, his hands flopped out to his sides and at first she thought he was unconscious and Simon was trying to help. But no, that wasn’t it because there was a large pool of dark red blood under his head; he must have hit it on the concrete when (or before?) he fell. And just as she was processing the fact that this friendly old man was dead, she saw the reason why; the knife that Simon held, the vicious-looking wound in the dead man’s stomach, and the bright-red blood that covered her husband’s fingers.

As he turned to look at her, the last of the silver faded from his eyes and he held his hands out as if to apologise, as if to show he meant no harm. But unfortunately for everyone, the gesture merged with the sight of the nightmare she had last seen on this very spot and, appalled, she simply turned tail and ran.

She heard his reasons, when he had the chance later to explain. She even accepted them to an extent; could understand there would be situations in which that would be the best thing to do. But that didn’t remove the image from her mind, of his hands reaching for her, the blood of an innocent man dripping from his fingers onto the floor. An image that was there still every time she saw him, every time he went near their son. And when she tried to sleep, the nightmares reached for her again. Except this time they had her husband’s hands.

Simon told her she was too sensitive, that she cared too much. She responded that she didn’t know how to turn it off but then, she found a way. She grasped at the fact that alcohol numbed her until she didn’t care, and then she turned to other mind-altering substances that chased away the memories entirely.

But this was Haven and the nightmares pushed through into her waking world, followed her into reality. A rumour of a serial killer at first, a rumour which would turn out to be false. The truth was worse; a Trouble that made people murder their loved ones without even knowing what they were doing. One of the first dead was a boy a year or two younger than Duke, and with the same wavy brown hair and quick smile as her son. She knew his father a little, he was a doctor at the hospital and she had an impression of him as someone very formal, very proper. 

If the rumour was even halfway true, this polite, educated man, had taken a baseball bat to his child’s head until there was hardly anything left, his shirt and hands splattered with the blood of a child that Duke had played with in little league.

And so now, when she tried to sleep, her nightmares reached not just for her, but for her child too and the worst part was, she understood that they were only going for her in order to get to him. As the same Trouble took more victims, a lot of the people wielding the weapons were husbands and fathers, but with his own Trouble already active, she felt sure that Simon wouldn’t be affected. She couldn’t say that about herself.

On her better days she was rational enough to recognise that the doting father Duke had had for his first few years was gone. Simon was too focused now, on things that no child should have to think about, and she knew that he would never read another bedtime story to his son, that they wouldn’t practice baseball on the beach again.

But she also knew, as sure as she knew anything, that Simon would never take a baseball bat to Duke’s head, or suffocate him in his sleep, or add poison to his oatmeal; all things that had happened in this town in recent days, all things that people who loved their children had done.

And she held onto that knowledge as tight as she could because, she didn’t know if it was still true of her. She didn't remember her parents, and though she had some paperwork somewhere with the date and times of their birth, and their parents too, that didn’t tell her anything useful about her family’s history. Not the kind of things you needed to know if you were from Haven.

She didn’t know if they had been Troubled, she didn’t know if she was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, waiting to kill or hurt those around her. She didn’t know what the blood inside her was capable of and she was terrified of finding out she carried something that her husband would kill her for.

And that was on her better days. In between times, the alcohol and the drugs that she used to keep the nightmares at bay continued to take their toll on her ability to function. She could see three futures for herself; one in which she completely disappeared into her addictions; one in which she left the narcotic substances behind but fell instead into the depths of her nightmares; and one in which she came to be affected by a Trouble (either her own or someone else’s) that she could not control.

In all of these futures, she could see herself doing nothing but hurting the one person she cared about most in the world; her child.

She stood over his bed as he slept, watching the steady rise and fall of his breath, her eyes soaking up the sight of his small, dreaming form to fix it in her memory. If she stayed, then one way or another she would hurt him, this she felt sure of. 

If she left, at least he would have a chance.


	2. Chapter 2

It was a shock to hear that Simon had died; I hadn't seen that coming. He had been so thoroughly imbued with this sense of purpose and destiny, I'd thought that would carry him through anything.

But he was gone, and Duke was alone. So I went back. It wasn't the same of course. He was angry with me, and I couldn't blame him for that. He didn't know whether to trust me, and why should he? I had left after all, and what kind of a mother leaves her son in the hands of an abusive father?

I struggled with that question myself, less and less sure I had done the right thing. But the sad truth is, I struggled with him too. He wasn't a child any more; he was becoming a man.

People said he didn't look much like his father, but sometimes when he turned to look at me with frustration and irritation in his eyes, or when I watched him chopping tomatoes in the kitchen, the flick of the knife catching the light and the red juice staining his fingers, Simon Crocker was all I could see.

For the first time I thought about the kind of man he might grow into. Would he become a killer too?

It didn't take me long to realise the answer was no. For whatever reason, the parts of him that were Simon were balanced with something else. Sometimes I hoped that was me, most times I realised it was just down to him and his determination to be a good man.

But maybe the people around him helped as well, because the other thing I realised was that I'd been wrong when I'd thought he was alone.

Haven, in its quieter years, had a caring community side to it. When I'd lived there before, I'd known the neighbours a little. Now, I saw how well they knew Duke, how they popped in every other day for a chat, to see how he was doing. The way they called in as though it were their second home and the way that he was fine with that.

I struggled even to remember their names, but he told me they'd been looking out for him for a long time; left him plates of food by the back door when he'd been younger and me and Simon had been a mess. And when he got a bit older and asked them how, they'd taught him to cook.

I tried to thank them one day, but they didn't want to talk to me. I couldn't blame them for that either. And then I tagged along with Duke when he went to the farmers’ market and I realised; it wasn't just them.

Duke had friends all over Haven. Some were nearer his own age, but most were older, many older than me. Looking out for him, teaching him things Simon and I never would have done, even at our best. He was popular, and that was all his own doing. Neither me nor my husband had done anything to make sure others looked out for him, and yet here they were, asking what he needed, asking if he was OK.

And I saw something else he had that neither I nor Simon had given him; his charisma, his likeability. We had failed him as parents, but he had charmed the whole town, and when I saw the way that town regarded me (the mother who deserted her child), when I saw the way people who would have turned towards him, turned instead away from me, I realised my presence was a danger to him yet again. At best I would only hold him back.

The nightmares didn't come for me quite so much now, but my addictions were still waiting and I knew it was only a matter of time before the nightmares came back. Whether just into my head, or returned to the town itself, it was all the same.

My son didn't need me anymore and there was nothing I could offer him. The town didn't want me there; my addictions were the only thing I had left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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